


In Plain Sight

by dear_monday



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Sociopathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-28
Updated: 2012-04-28
Packaged: 2017-11-04 11:13:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/393190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dear_monday/pseuds/dear_monday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock thinks he's a sociopath. John knows he isn't, because he's one himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Plain Sight

**Author's Note:**

> just archiving some of my older fic - your regularly scheduled bandom ridiculousness will resume shortly.

Two childhoods, worlds apart, and utterly, blissfully oblivious of one another.  
  
One, littered with odd, nasty little incidents: inexplicably vanished cats and dogs and guinea-pigs. Little, bloodied, lifeless sparrows and cabbage butterflies with shredded wings. Limp, broken toys, and other children too scared to tell tales. Before the monsters learn to hide in plain sight, it's always the children who see them for what they really are.  
  
And another ‒ meticulously, brilliantly average in every respect. Almost suspiciously so, in fact.  
  
If you had to attach one each to Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, you'd almost certainly get it wrong. Most likely, it wouldn't even occur to you that Sherlock Holmes, all iceberg cheekbones and razorblade eyes, used to think that _blending in_ was safest; used to think that if no one knew you were special or unusual or just _clever_ , they'd have no reason to point and laugh with dirt-smeared smiles and sharp, grubby fingers.  
  
And if someone told you that John Watson, quiet and unassuming and beige-jumper-clad, was the one who knew the others' secrets almost before they did, who smiled _because_ they were scared, you'd laugh. Of course you would; it's blatantly ridiculous. You'd think they were having a laugh, or maybe you'd advise them to see someone about that paranoia.  
  
You'd be wrong, of course, but you mustn't blame yourself. We all were.  
  
  


 

  
On a chilly, grey April morning, a roomful of small children sit in studious silence. Occasionally, one turns a page of whichever illustrated happily-ever-after they're currently applying themselves to. A young woman, blonde, pink-clad and vanilla-scented, moves between the desks like Florence Nightingale between hospital beds. In one corner of the room, a coltish, dark-haired child runs a few mental calculations, and determines that the average child is asking for help roughly every nine and a half minutes. He frowns; he's been silent for nearly thirteen. Mustn't let the painstakingly cultivated mask slip. He raises a small hand, which is soon spotted by the woman who'd like to think of herself as his teacher, and she makes her way over to him.  
  
'Miss,' he says, affecting a puzzled frown, 'What does that mean?'  
  
'Let's see... Oh, _necessary_. If something's necessary, that means it's something you need. So... Oh, I don't know, you'd say that breathing is necessary.'  
  
'Oh.' He aims the widest, brightest smile he can muster at her. 'Thank you, miss.'  
  
She smiles back, fondly. _Such a sweet kid, nothing like that brother of his at all_. 'You're welcome, Sherlock. Oh, Eloise, are you stuck _again_?'  
  
And she's gone again, off to attend to some genuine vocabulary emergency.  
  
With a furtive scan of the classroom, Sherlock returns to the copy of _An Introduction to Particle Physics_ hidden under his desk. He can't even begin to imagine what it must be like without this, this explosion of everything you can see and hear and feel into a million perfectly elegant solutions, equations unfurling like strings of stars. He can't believe, sometimes, that they can't all see it ‒ the way the books expand the world until deep space floods from his nose and mouth and supernovas burn behind his eyes.  
  
They don't, though, they never do, and at seven years old, he doesn't know whether to be grateful or disappointed. It's a vicious little puzzle, which essentially amounts to friends or acknowledgement; to afternoon dragonfly-hunting by the pond or rigorous intellectual stretching; to actual _friends_ or rivals with sliding, hungry eyes. It's uncomfortable, the pretence, and even now he knows he can't keep it up forever. So, for now, the real books are a secret and there's no one to tell the answers to the mysteries of the universe to ‒ but maybe, for now, it's alright.   
  


 

 

  
Miles and miles away and maybe an hour later, on that same damp, pale April morning, an almost-different young woman sits opposite John Watson and struggles with her temper. He's the twelfth child she's interrogated that morning about the highly suspicious presumed escape and subsequent disappearance of Waffle, the class gerbil. Benjy Gallagher swears blind that he saw John by Waffle's hutch yesterday afternoon, but she doesn't know if that's because it's true, or because Benjy knows that Julia Marling likes John better than him.  
   
'John,' she says, levelly, 'I'm going to ask you one more time. Did you let Waffle out of the hutch yesterday afternoon?'  
'I didn't!' he tugs agitatedly at a rogue strand of almost-blonde hair. It's not the first, the second or even the fifth time she's asked, and she can see him getting frustrated. She doesn't know who to believe. Things like this do just seem to _happen_ an awful lot around John. They're never his fault, as far as she or anyone else can see, but there are some things that the laws of probability, honest and uncomplicated and laid out with coins and dice, just don't seem to explain. But to look at him now, sitting there gazing at her with something midway between earnest, wide-eyed solemnity and his permanent expression of long-suffering puzzlement... No. She's been working too hard; she needs a cup of tea, a couple of biscuits, an early night. This is ridiculous. Only an idiot would sit here, in full acknowledgement that Benjy Gallagher even has a _motive_ , for crying out loud, and continue to question a boy who has nothing but an uncanny knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  
   
'Alright. I believe you, then. Go out and play. Oh, and tell Angela to come in, if you see her.'  
   
''Kay. Thanks, miss...' With a small, shy smile, he stumbles out of the plastic chair and, tripping slightly on his own too-big trainers (his sister's last pair, she thinks), he ambles towards the door.  
   
Benjy Gallagher is waiting for him in the doorway to the playground. He grabs the John's arm and twists, hard.  
   
'It was _you_ , wasn't it?'  
   
'Benjy! Ow, let go! I don't know what you're‒' John struggles obligingly and protests with convincing indignation.  
   
'You _know_ what! _Waffle_! You _knew_ it was my turn to feed her and you let her out to get me in trouble!'  
   
With consummate timing, John goes limp. It's a surrender, an admission. Benjy, all tousled red hair and burning eyes, hisses with anger and twists John's arm harder, drawing him in. 'You _did_ _!_ '  
   
For a split-second, the front slips, and John _smiles_ , really smiles, and it's terrifying. 'You won't tell.'  
   
'Says who?'  
   
'Says someone who knows you cheated in the test.'  
   
He drops John's arm like it's suddenly burning his hands.  
   
John's quite right. He won't tell.  
  


 

 

  
Ten years on, and Sherlock, at seventeen, is the blazing, restless creature you might recognise. A thoroughly and comprehensively broken heart and a hair's-breadth brush with death have taught him a rather brutal lesson. He'd tell you differently (what do I know? Maybe he _did_ tell you differently), but he's more human than he's ever been. He just doesn't much like to show it anymore. It's safer that way. In the same way that the earth is only ever half-exposed to the sun, he's just hiding his other side ‒ the wrecked, splintered one. He likes to pretend it's not there, and that works well enough, most days. Meanwhile, an uneasy Mr and Mrs Watson have sent John off to fight, fresh from Bart's.  
  
The army. Naturally. Where better to hide him? A man with surgeon-steady hands and no conscience could do _awfully_ well for himself there.   
  


 

  
  


Mycroft hates hospitals with a fiery, almost inexhaustible loathing. Hates everything about them ‒ the hard shadows from the fluorescent tubes that turn faces into lifeless skulls, the ubiquitous, sterile green paint, the chemical reek of antiseptic, the dehumanising queues and monitors and clipboards and thin cotton robes, the way he can _feel_ death and hopelessness and sickness in the walls and floors. They sap his hope and his reason, and he detests the illogical power the places wield over him.  
   
Then again, no hospital has ever saved anyone he loves. As far as he's concerned, hospitals are where people die.  
   
That's why he'd dropped everything and taken the next train home from Cambridge when he got the message; why that exam had paled into sudden insignificance; why he's been here for the last twenty-four hours, just sitting rigidly in an uncomfortable chair in a numb, timeless trance state. Sherlock hasn't moved either, but that's more because of the web of tubes and wires connecting him to his mechanical lungs, and the sedative-induced coma. When Mycroft had arrived, soaked through from the rain, all nineteen gangly years of him, wild-eyed and desperate and _terrified_ that it was already too late, a haggard male nurse had taken him aside and told him, very gently, what had happened. It had been an odd, almost out-of-body experience, from which he can only remember the odd word here and there, like _dependency_ and _overdose_ and _premeditated_.  
   
It was a well-meant gesture, but the sight of Sherlock lying there, barely breathing, had been so visceral and unexpected that he'd had to look away before the image could burn itself permanently onto the backs of his eyelids. He'd just looked so _small_ , so uncharacteristically still and silent under the thin, rough sheet. He's always been pale, but the tracery of china-blue veins shining through his skin has somehow made him almost unbearably _human_. Every shallow, rasping breath is a battle. He lies in the eye of a storm as an army of doctors, nurses and machines fight to keep his heart beating.  
   
Mycroft hasn't always got on particularly well with his brother, and their relationship has ground through years of ingrained nastiness and a thousand different shades of dislike. But when Sherlock's eyes slide open, the relief is breathtaking, bone-shaking, _overwhelming_.  
   
'Sherlock,' he says, simply because he isn't used to dealing with emotions on this _scale_ , particularly not with regards to his _brother_ , of all people. Sherlock makes a small noise of mingled acknowledgement and irritation.  
   
He's going to ask; Sherlock can tell. He can see Mycroft's mouth struggling to frame the words, can almost _taste_ it in the air. It's the one question he'd give his life not to answer. He nearly _did_ , in fact. Give him simultaneous equations, the cube root of pi, the Avogadro constant ‒ anything but the _why_ he can practically _hear_ his brother thinking.  
   
It's not that he doesn't _know_ why. When he closes his eyes, he sees burning constellations of memory suspended inside his head. Every dying star is the slick slip-slide of lips, the frantic tugging-tearing at zips and buttons, a ripple of laughter on a foggy morning, the pull of fingers in his hair. He hates it because it sounds like something out of the sort of cheap romance novel he makes a point of not reading. If it wasn't for the hurt and humiliation still nestled against his ribcage, it'd almost be funny. It sounds ridiculous even in his head: _I fell in love with a boy, and I thought for a while that he was like me, thought I didn't have to pretend not to be me. But he wasn't a nice boy, and by the time I realised, it was too late._  
   
He's heard it said that the first time is the worst one. And it must be true, otherwise, he can't understand why people devote such ridiculous amounts of time and effort _looking_ for this. Not that it matters, of course. Once has been more than enough, and he's going to be just fine on his own from now on.

  
  


 

  
John's become accustomed to being thought of as the only clean one in a family of addicts and addicts-waiting-to-happen. It's a role he's grown into over the years, pushing the edges out and tugging the corners in until it fits as if it was made for him. And he _is_ clean, really, at least in the standard sense that everyone seems to use the word in. They could slide needles into the crooks of his elbows, draw phials of his blood and send it off for a parade of tests ‒ they wouldn't find anything untoward, in a rather neat little twist of irony that John finds terribly satisfying.  
  
As time has spooled past, that creeping sense that he isn't quite like everyone else has solidified into something tangible, but ultimately inconsequential. Does it matter, at the end of the day, that unlike him, they break too easily and cling to each other like drowning sailors? No, not really. Does it matter that they're all so pitifully desperate for _anything_ to reassure them that they're not alone? Also no. But it makes it much easier to get what he wants out of life if he plays along ‒ doing anything else pries at their cornerstones and shakes their foundations, disturbing the stagnant calm of their minds. So he watches, and practices, until you'd never know until it was much, much too late that he was any different from you or me. He inhabits a curious, contradictory position between insider and outsider, born of humanity but so _other_ he might as well not be. People fascinate him; the way they love too hard and hate too fast and do the most ridiculous things for _no apparent reason_. And then, most mystifyingly of all, when they split and shatter, their secrets die with them. There are no explanations ( _this is why you love and hate_ ) carved on their bones, no instructions ( _this is how to feel_ ) written into their DNA, no promises ( _feeling will keep you alive_ ) whispered in the ebb and spill of their blood. You can learn to mend and dismantle the mechanisms that keep a human breathing, but to _understand_ them you have to really _be_ one of them, in a way that John never will be.  
  
He returns his attention to the woman bleeding out under his hands. She isn't screaming anymore, and her eyes seem to be looking through him, past him into whatever happens next. It doesn't take a surgeon as good as John to know she doesn't have long ‒ she was already too far gone when he'd found her, and it looks like she's got at least one punctured lung. A bright thread of blood snakes out of the corner of her mouth and she coughs weakly, every faint breath rattling in her chest. This, here, the moment suspended between living, breathing human and lifeless corpse is fleeting and tantalising and _completely_ impossible to look away from. She's a mess of khaki and blood and sweat-slicked coffee skin, burning out under a remorseless desert sun as her eyes dim and more blood flowers across her chest. He watches her mouth trace the silent ghost of a name ( _Lover? Sibling? Parent _?__ ), and then she stills against the sun-baked dirt, eyes blank. He stands, feeling drained. Another day, another dead, another small explosion of grief for this flawed, unimportant creature breaking the surfaces of a few other little lives. Just another excruciatingly, bafflingly ordinary human who's died leaving him no closer to the missing piece.  
  
Maybe next time.  
  


 

 

  
Another ten years, ticking, ticking. Much to everyone's surprise, Sherlock's straightened himself out, gone clean, got a job (albeit a made up one). If you tell yourself often enough that you're happy, you start to believe it, and he _is_ ‒ as much as he ever could be, at least. And why wouldn't he be? Finding something that he's _good_ at, something that he can do better than anyone else was a blessing, a benediction, and not one he was inclined to reject. It's a life sentence, not a happily-ever-after, and there's going to be hell to pay one day, but so _what_? He's learnt how to keep people away from his heart and as long as he can keep that up, he's safe.  
  
Meanwhile, John is home, and bored, bored, _bored_.  
  


 

 

  
_'Rain!'_ explodes Sherlock, seizing Lestrade by the shoulders while Donovan looks on, exhausted and frustrated but determined as ever just to do her job. 'Don't you _see?_ It's been raining more or less non-stop for the last three days. One was already here, one came in, one of them shot the other, made it look like a suicide and then shot themself. Look at her clothes ‒ completely dry, she can't have been outside; there's no‒'  
   
'No coat, no umbrella,' breathes Lestrade, wide-eyed and horrified. 'Fuck, you're _right_ , how the _hell_ did we‒'  
   
'Because,' says Sherlock, smugly, 'You don't _observe_. As I've been telling you for the last five years.'  
   
So saying, he releases Lestrade, turns, and sweeps out past Donovan before they all see he's positively _grinning_. It suits him just fine that they all think he's a psychopathic bastard with a heart of stone; he'd much prefer that they never start looking past the ends of their own noses. Not only would he be out of a job if they did, but some of them might even try to _befriend_ him, and God knows _that's_ never going to lead to anything good. He doesn't close the door behind him as he steps out onto the pavement, and the streetlights' synthetic yellow-orange glow lights him up in an unholy halo. _Better safe than sorry_ , he reminds himself. People, he's realised, are taught to make spaces in their lives for other people, to label the spaces and the other people that fit there: _lover. Friend. Spouse. Sibling_. It's nothing more than an emotional transposition of _tinker-tailor-soldier-spy_. They lean on these neatly sorted people; convince themselves they couldn't live without them. It's actually much easier than they're all led to believe: Sherlock's found that it's _nice_ to have friends and all the rest of it, certainly, but not _necessary_. Even Mycroft's barely an acquaintance now, and Sherlock knows he worries, but it's better this way. Sherlock's way is much safer and altogether less hassle. In fact, he doesn't know why more of them haven't realised this. It makes his life much easier, and it means there's less to distract him from his work. And that's _good_ ‒ he's allowed the work to grow until it occupies his every conscious thought (and probably some of the unconscious ones too, if the dreams he has are anything to go by). It doesn't leave room for personal relationships, but it makes him _very_ good at what he does. An advantageous solution, then, for nearly all involved.  
   
And yet, against all odds, and even though he prefers to keep his distance from them himself, what he's never lost is his _faith_ in people. There's no logic in it, what with the killers and conmen and thieves he encounters on a regular basis as well as his own unfortunate past experiences. He's never yet seen anything to make him believe in God, but somewhere, deep down in his soul, is a tiny, glowing spark of unshakeable belief in _people_ \- in their pettiness and their jealousies and their obsessions as well as their grace and forgiveness and strength. He hides this spark, ignores it, tells himself time and time again that he'd be all the better for losing it altogether, but it's as if it's buried so deeply in everything that he _is_ that he can't lose it without losing something of himself.  
   
It is this fierce, silent belief that may yet be the end of everything for Sherlock Holmes.   
   
  


 

  
Rather perversely, the sessions with his therapist are the closest thing to a thrill John can get these days. He's studied PTSD extensively, made lists of symptoms and threaded them through his personality to synthesize the appropriate tics and mannerisms convincingly. She's not stupid, his therapist, and she's been specifically trained to search out and solve people's issues.  
  
By rights, if anyone should see right through him, it's her.  
  
She never does, though. He knows, really, that it would be much safer to gradually fade and blur the symptoms away until she pronounces him cured. She's becoming frustrated by his complete and mysterious lack of progress, but he just can't quite tear himself away. With nothing at all to distract him, he suspects he'd have to start killing, and he'd really like to avoid that, if only because being caught would generate such a ghastly mess. He's going to have to find something, though, and _soon_ , because this subsistence on these little half-hearted scraps of excitement always leaves him hungry; it will _never_ be enough. There's something black and nameless lurking in the murky depths of his psyche, something restless and cruel and bored. It sings inside his head, encouraging him to risk more and more ‒ _make friends, get a job, find a girlfriend. Just to see if you can. To see if any of them notice_. It gets louder and louder by the day until it's screaming, until he's got no patience to ignore it anymore. On that morning, October the 12th, he leaves his tiny, dingy flat and walks among humanity for no other reason than because he _can_. They seethe around him like one seamless organism, their eyes sliding past him like water off a duck's back. It will never cease to fascinate him, the way they're all so fixated on one another that they melt together into a single tangled web under a million miles of sky.  
  
'John! John Watson!'  
  
He turns and sees a complacently plump man in a trench coat, with a receding hairline and a garishly striped tie covering the slightly strained buttons on his shirt. _Nondescript ‒ you wouldn't look twice at him. Likes his comforts, doesn't lead a hard life_. His glasses nestle in his good-natured face and it takes John less than a single disappointing second to realise that this man is no threat to him.  
  
'Stamford ‒ Mike Stamford. We were at Bart's together.' Beaming, he extends a hand. It's soft, fleshy, agile and steady but unused to hard work; a far cry from the sun-baked scalpel-handle indentations in John's fingertips and the faint shape of the handgun's grip curled across his palm.  
'Yes ‒ sorry, yes, Mike. Hello.' Almost without thinking, he slides easily into a sober, muted demeanour, playing against Stamford's innocent delight at seeing an old friend. Yes, he remembers Mike Stamford ‒ notably his enterprising methods of earning the money for his tuition fees. Drugs and their addicts, John thinks with a wry smile, are turning out to be something of a recurring theme of his life. While he makes agreeable small talk (not so hard at all, once you've learnt the script), he wonders abstractedly what happened to Mike Stamford: whether he's still dealing, whether he ever got caught, how many people currently in the man's life would recognise him as the unremarkable boy selling chemical thrills from amongst heaps of folders and reams of notes. _I could turn him in, if he is_ , John realises. _Turn him in; change everything. His entire life. I could do all that, easil_ _y_. He toys with the idea. The thought of poor, well-meaning Mike Stamford locked up somewhere while he himself is still unknown and at large in the world hangs on a pleasing inversion of right and wrong. He restrains a sigh. Tempting, but probably more trouble than it's worth - just like everything else these days.  
  


 

 

  
And then, just like that, it all aligns for a blinding, breathless split-second ‒ revelation, revolution ‒ and _everything_ changes.  
  
  


  
  
'Here ‒ use mine.'  
   
Sherlock looks up with genuine interest and John catches a glimpse of a deliciously formidable mind, which flushes a strikingly prescient thrum of anticipation through him. He tries not to hope, tells himself that he's got absolutely nothing to go on but a razor-edged flash of _something_ , but it's difficult.  
   
'Afghanistan or Iraq?'  
   
  _Jackpot_. This man, softly-spoken, nonchalantly obnoxious and steely-eyed, could be everything he's waited for. It takes every shred of concentration he's got and everything he's learnt to maintain some semblance of normality, but he isn't too worried: the man looks so absorbed in whoever he needs to text so urgently that John reckons he could have sprouted an extra head and Sherlock would have dismissed it as irrelevant. He wants to laugh, wants to run a mile, wants to distil the sparkling, jagged-edged excitement filtering through his veins and keep it forever. This is perfect, this is _absurd_. Quickly, he extrapolates a normal reaction: _You wouldn't have been expecting him to know, you'd be surprised, maybe think you'd misheard_ ‒  
   
'I'm sorry?'  
   
'Afghanistan? Or Iraq?'  
   
 _Smiling; he hasn't guessed. Go for disbelief..._  
   
At least John manages to get through the next few minutes without giving himself away. He feels dizzy, breathless, can't believe that if he's careful, _this could be any other day._ He's going to have to pretend better than he ever has before. He's going to have to be _flawless._ One tiny little slip (a fractional absence of compassion, the slightest tinge of bloodlust bleeding through the cracks) could and may well yet give him away. It's going to be difficult and frequently terrifying, and he can hardly wait. Sherlock Holmes doesn't know it yet, but he's just become part of the most subtly elaborate game of his life.  
   
And then he's gone again with a wink and a cool, glassy smile and John feels as if he's been hit by a bus but it doesn't _matter_ , because this is real and now and perfectly, brilliantly _dangerous_. It's instant, chemical, and he can't believe what's just been dropped into his lap. It's one thing to slip under a normal person's radar, and quite another to do the same with a _genius_.

That night, John Watson dreams about bright eyes and explosions and conjoined silhouettes, deep-space black against the blaze.  
  
  


  
   
A mere handful of months later and John is well and truly hooked. Sherlock's the ideal puzzle to pass the time with: the closer you get to the solution, the more easily it seems to slip through your fingers. A self-confessed sociopath who seems to take every chance he gets to prove that he actually _isn't_ one is a lovely paradox. Besides, he doesn't think he could give Sherlock up if he tried ‒ he's everything he could possibly want: a ready source of adrenaline highs all tangled up with a perfectly enigmatic curiosity. In fact, he thinks he understands Sherlock's addiction to 'the game' a lot better than he pretends to.  
   
He doesn't know when Sherlock's junkie heart rubbed off on him, but he needs this mess of breathless chases and gunfire and streetlights and bruising kisses and cold hands, needs it like he's never needed anything or anyone before. He starts to wonder if, for the first time, he might be in over his head. It was only ever going to be _just for a while; just until I've figured him out_ , but every week he finds a new reason to stay. John's clever enough to see that Sherlock is genuinely _brilliant_ , more so than he himself will ever be, and that it's only a matter of time before he starts to fit the pieces together.  
   
If nothing else, John knows with utter, bone-deep certainty that Sherlock isn't, _can't_ be, a sociopath. He'd like to hide behind it, use the big word to excuse himself from all the tedious little social conventions he so abhors, but a disquietingly penetrating stare and an abrasive manner do not a sociopath make. John sees the horror written in every line of him when the old woman dies in a mess of brick and flame and broken glass, sees the confusion and hurt explode behind Sherlock's eyes when he himself steps out from behind the plastic curtain, drowning in semtex. And when he catches John's sidelong glance at a crime scene and flashes a razor-thin smile, a giddy epiphany bursts like a ripe cherry inside his head: _He_ cares _about you. Maybe even loves you_.  
   
John is quite sure that if he could, he'd be far past caring by now and well into the losing-your-head-completely phase.  
   
That's a rather alarming thought, and he counts himself lucky.  
   
He knows, really, that he's been right all along, but that doesn't make it as easy to leave as it should. Because, at the end of the day, John's a thrill-seeker and an addict, and Sherlock's a thrill. Just living with him _there_ , close enough to touch, is nearly enough.  
   
But _fooling_ him? Fooling one of the cleverest men alive? That's got to be the biggest thrill of all.


End file.
